Brussels, 02/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 2 September, the Committee for the Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets voted to pay aid for privately storing butter and skimmed milk powder (SMP) (see EUROPE 11145).
This involves measures to mitigate the effects of the Russian embargo on imports of several EU agricultural products. The United Kingdom was the only country to abstain (all the other delegations approved the measures).
As this involves an implementing act, the private storage measures for butter and SMP will be directly applicable after formal adoption of the text by the Commission and its publication in the EU's Official Journal.
The Commission will give aid for private storage of butter and SMP to cover the daily costs of storage of these products for a period of three to seven months (90-210 days). The Common Agricultural Policy finances part of the costs of this temporary storage (a fixed rate per tonne to which is added a fixed daily amount per tonne). The Commission aid payable for butter will be €18.93 per tonne of storage for fixed storage costs plus €0.28 per tonne per day of contractual storage for a period of 90-210 days. For SMP, the aid payable will be €8.86 per tonne of storage for fixed storage costs plus €0.16 per tonne per day.
The products affected by the measure remain the property of the operators, who will be in charge of selling them post-storage. There is no ceiling on the volumes that can be stocked. Requests can be made till the end of 2014.
Cheese. The Commission also presented experts from EU countries with two texts (implementing acts), the first on extending private storage aid to certain cheeses, the second on extending until the end of the year (instead of until the end of September), the public intervention period for butter and SMP.
The text provoked a number of comments from certain delegations, especially Baltic countries, with regard to cheese. The Commission will decide soon whether it intends to amend the text to include certain soft cheeses that are not currently covered by the text. The period of storage paid would increase from two months (60 days) to seven months (210 days). This measure would also have a ceiling set at 155,000 tonnes of cheese, according to the draft text (European cheese exports to Russia rose to 257,000 tonnes in 2013). In the draft text the rate of aid payable would be €15.57 per tonne of storage for fixed storage costs plus €0.27 per tonne per day of contractual storage.
Private storage aid for butter, SMP and cheese could cost the Community budget €10-20 million, according to certain estimates. 25 member states exported cheese to Russia last year. The main countries are the Netherlands, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Italy, France and Latvia.
In an effort to deal with the effects of the embargo, the Commission has already announced aid for peaches and nectarines (€32.7 million) and aid for perishable fruit and vegetable producers (€125 million).
Preparing the Agriculture Council. The Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) consists of EU experts and it met on Tuesday 2 September to prepare the extraordinary meeting of agriculture ministers for Friday 5 September in Brussels. This meeting will focus on measures to be taken in response to the Russian embargo. The European Commissioner for Agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, is expected to inform the College of Commissioners of the measures already taken in response to the embargo, on Wednesday 3 September (short and medium term measures are already known, such as promoting research for new markets) and the possible impact of Russian restrictions. (LC)